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Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
Zaka Rural District Council is under fire for abusing $344 000 statutory tax fees it collected on behalf of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) over the past three years. This prompted Zimra on three separate occasions to raid the council’s CBZ and Agribank accounts to recover the money. The abuse of the money came to light over the weekend when the local authority officials failed to explain how they had used $34 000 disbursed by the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) this year for road maintenance. Over the weekend, all the seven local authorities in Masvingo were asked to explain how they had used the road fund, during a familiarisation tour of the country’s roads by Transport and Infrastructure Minister Joram Gumbo.

Six districts convincingly explained their cases, but Zaka said its allocation was garnished by Zimra on two separate occasions and on the third occasion, the revenue authority raided a grant that was extended to the RDC by Unicef.

Masvingo Minister of State Senator Shuvai Mahofa asked the district administrator Mr Tapson Chivanga, to explain why they had failed to pay Zimra taxes. Mr Chivanga said he was still new at the local authority. Sen Mahofa then said the chief executive of the council, Mr David Majaura, should give an explanation.

Mr Majaura was not present at the meeting. Sen Mahofa promised to look into the matter. “We want to know why the district was not paying statutory taxes to Zimra,” she said. “We are going to deal with the Zaka issue and establish what has been happening.” Mr Chivanga later told the Herald that the council had failed to maintain its accounting books for the past three years resulting in revenue leakages.

“The council has not remitted over $344 000 it collected on behalf of Zimra,” he said. “Last year, the council received $16 000 from Zinara and this year it received $34 000 but all that money was garnished by Zimra. Even money that was extended to the council by Unicef was also garnished.

“At one point, the council made a payment plan with Zimra that it will pay $6 000, but it failed to honour the plan. This prompted Zimra to raid the council’s bank accounts every time when there is money deposited.”

Mr Chivanga said, council workers had gone for three months without salaries because Zimra was raiding all the money including funds raised by the council through other means. He said there was need for a forensic audit at the council adding that he was convinced that a lot of illicit deals were going on at the council.

“The accounting system of the council is very porous and there is incompetence in other areas where people were employed without the necessary qualifications,” he said. “As the new DA, I am making efforts to make sure that council systems work. I think what has exacerbated the situation is the fact that there has never been disciplinary action against the council officials.

“Why should we fail to pay tax when other local authorities are remitting? We cannot dismiss that there has been gross abuse of money.” Efforts to get a comment from Mr Majaure were fruitless as his mobile phone was not reachable.